Loveon.Chat

The air backstage was viscous, thick enough to taste—a foul cocktail of sweat, cheap whiskey, and the metallic tang of shattered dreams from nameless fighters. This was the beating, bloody heart of Chicago's underground, and Alaric "Rex" Costello was its one and only king. From the end of the hall, the dull roar of the crowd seeped through the walls, a distant thunder punctuated by the brutal rhythm of glove meeting flesh, a war hymn composed for its monarch.
Isolde "The Siren" Venti, currently cloaked in the stiff, cheap uniform of a cocktail waitress, moved like a phantom through the masculine chaos. Her tray was empty, the hem of her black dress sweeping across a concrete floor stained dark with old blood and spilled liquor. No one gave her a second glance. In this world, she was part of the scenery, an insignificant cog.
Perfect.
Her fingertips ghosted over her waist. Beneath the coarse fabric lay a folded parchment map, the key to the other half of the Judge's Ledger. This map was the first step in her vendetta against the Marino family who had betrayed her, the matchstick with which she would set the entire Chicago underworld ablaze. The irony was not lost on her that she had just stolen this very match from the king of her sworn enemies, Alaric himself, from a safe reputed to be unbreakable.
The exit to the back alley was in sight. Twenty more steps, and she would melt into the Chicago night.
She quickened her pace, the click of her heels swallowed by the cacophony of the fight.
Then, a wall.
A wall of black wool, white linen, and pure menace, materializing out of nowhere to block her path.
Isolde looked up and fell into a pair of eyes that burned with hellfire. Alaric Costello. He was taller than the legends claimed, his oppressive presence more tangible. He wore no cologne, only the scent of gunpowder, expensive leather, and raw male dominance that brutally colonized the air around her. He didn't look at her face; his gaze, like a searchlight, landed with unerring accuracy on her waist, right where the map was hidden. He hadn't seen a flaw in her disguise; he had, like a predator, simply smelled an intruder in his den.
"Lost, little bird?" His voice was a low growl, each word weighted with absolute authority.
Isolde’s pulse remained steady as a rock. She summoned the perfect mask of timid innocence, lowering her head slightly. "Sorry, sir. I... I was just leaving for the night."
She tried to step around him. He didn’t move, a statue rooted in the floor of hell itself.
"Is that so?" He let out a soft chuckle, devoid of any warmth. "Because I seem to recall you have something of mine."
The charade was over. In an instant, Isolde’s body switched from docile lamb to coiled viper. Wasting no time on words, she moved like a blur. Her knee shot up, not for the obvious target, but for the cluster of muscles on his right thigh—a precise strike meant to cripple a man in an instant.
But Alaric was no ordinary man.
As if he’d anticipated the move, he shifted his weight slightly, letting her knee slam into a thigh as hard as granite. A sharp, searing pain shot through her kneecap, yet he remained utterly unmoved. Her most trusted technique, rendered useless against his brute force.
A fatal miscalculation.
In the split-second of her pained paralysis, his hand shot out and clamped around her wrist. His grip was a vise of iron, the pressure immense enough to threaten to crush bone.
The next second, her world turned upside down.
Alaric wrenched her forward, then brutally spun her around, slamming her with unforgiving force against the corridor's rough brick wall.
CRACK!
The violent impact sent a jolt of pain through her spine and drove the air from her lungs. Her head swam from the shock. Before she could even draw a breath, his massive body was on her, pinning her between the wall and his own hard form, his power trapping her completely. Her feet barely touched the floor. The grit of the brick scraped at her back through the thin fabric of her uniform, a stinging abrasion.
His face buried itself in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent like a beast, those burning eyes now inches from hers, churning with the fury of being challenged and a darker, more primitive desire.
"Now," he snarled, one hand clamping both of her wrists in an unbreakable grip, pinning them high above her head against the wall, "we're going to talk about what's mine... and about that pretty little life of yours."
He didn't wait for her answer.
His other hand seized the collar of her waitress uniform.
RRRRIP!
With the deafening sound of violently tearing cotton, Alaric ripped her dress open.

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